A belief, made popular in 1931 that Baptists can trace their roots, in a genealogical succession back to John the Baptist.
People who subscribe to this call themselves (and are know as): Landmarkists, Baptist-briders
The hard-liners are Landmarkists (a legitimate baptism is one administered by someone who was baptized by someone who was baptized by ..... John the Baptist)
Those uncomfortable with being hard-liners subscribe to what is called the "Spiritual Kinship Theory"
THE PROBLEMATIC BELIEF: The validation of Baptists is based on a succession of Baptist groups going back to John the Baptist.
Practical problems:
- History is based on documentation and verifiable facts. A succession cannot be proven by historical documentation. In fact, a number of statements and documents that do exist is that Baptists, from their beginnings in the 1600s REJECT an affiliation with anabaptists.
- A succession theory violates a primary Baptist distinctive of separation. Why would Baptists want to be identified with antiTrinitarians and full-blown gnostics?
- Since the Bible is the basis of authority, why is a contrived, mythical succession used to validate what a Baptist is?
- Immersion by Baptism and Soul Liberty are not enough to distinguish a group as Baptist.
- Baptist-Briders reject the idea that Baptists are protestants. However, the groups the Baptist-briders say we come from were protesting the Catholic church and broke away at great cost.
- If you are not baptized in a Baptist church, you need to be rebaptized.
Here are the groups identified as "Baptists" in the Trail of Blood. Many are Christian, but not all.
Montanists: Charismatics which believed their revelatory prophecies were either on par or exceeded the authority of Christ and Paul. They allowed dice playing (lol-thrown in to convince the hardended of all Baptists)
Paulicians: Gnostics (enough said)
Waldenses: close in beliefs to Particular Baptists. Calvinists. Interesting... Baptist-briders reject Calvinistic thought. Why would they say they came from them?
Anabaptists: John Smyth complained in 1608: "...against the term Anabaptist as a name of reproach unjustly cast upon them [Baptists]"
Helwys split from Smyth when Smyth became an Anabaptist.
The Second London Baptist Confession says, clearly: "...which are commonly (though falsly) called ANABAPTISTS"